"It was just apathy out there."

Gary D’Amato analyzes the demise of U.S. Bank's role in the Milwaukee event and gets a pretty frank analysis from the bank's Bill Bertha.

"We're not blaming anybody," Bertha said. "Other companies didn't see the value of entertaining clients. No revenues were being generated above operating costs, other than what we were subsidizing.

"Nobody cared. A very good analogy is that we threw a multimillion-dollar party for Milwaukee and Wisconsin, in a park with tents, refreshments and entertainment - all the bells and whistles - and nobody showed up.

"It was just apathy out there."

Tournament officials do not release attendance figures, but the galleries were noticeably smaller in 2007 and '08 than they had been in previous years at Brown Deer Park, the host venue since 1994.

One reason is that the PGA Tour shifted the tournament dates in 2007 so that the Milwaukee event was played the same week as the British Open, a major championship televised by ABC.

Comments

[Eric Stratton]

be interesting to see/hear what's going on in Finchem's office...

[Lefty3jax]

Didn't the Greater Milwaukee Open begin as an event opposite the British open? For most of its exsitence it was in the Shadow of the British and seemed to do okay. We've built up the top players in the world so much no one wants to see anyone else play.